Ambition

This is the Situation 30 of Polti. Its Elements are:

• an Ambitious Person
• an Object coveted
• an Adversary

Plot: The Ambitious Person seeks the Object coveted and is opposed by the Adversary.
The point of this story is not that the Ambitious Person tries to get the Object and it's blocked by the Adversary, but only that wants to, and the Adversary tries to stop those desires. For this to happen, the Adversary needs to be aware of what the Ambitious Person wants before it tries to get it.

Object

The Object can be an actual Object, a person, a concept (the throne; freedom), a place (to conquer somebody else's lands)

Being a passive Element, the PCs wouldn't be part of it.

Ambitious Person

What intends the Ambitious Person to do to get the Object?

PCs as the Ambitious Person

If the ambition is spontaneous it's difficult that you can prepare for it. You can provoke their ambition by presenting to them something they would want, be it freedom for slave PCs, a throne for a (maybe PC) noble and his PC allies or whatever.

Depending on their reactions, they'll distribute themselves between the Ambitious (those who want to take action and get the Object) and the Adversary (those who try to calm the Ambitious and leave things as they are)

A second problem when the PCs are the Ambitious Person is that, for this to be a Ambition story, they have to find Adversaries, speaking against taking action, and that implies the Adversaries need to know about the ambition and possibly about what the PCs intend to do.

Often, the PCs will decide to take action and your story will become a Daring Enterprise.

Adversary

The Adversary needs to know what the Ambitious Person wants, probably what it intends to do, and to try to erase its ambition.

PCs as Adversary

Often this would play as a series of conversations between the Ambitious Person and the PCs. Maybe the Ambitious Person tries to get the PCs' help while they not only refuse but try to reason with the Ambitious Person to forget the Object.

To make a story from this, you have to present the PCs with several occasions to reduce the ambition, mixed with scenes showing them different reasons for and against the Ambitious Person getting the Object.

In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Cassius (the Ambitious Person) wants for Julius to die (the Object) and shares his thoughts with Brutus (the Adversary) Besides conversations between the two of them, there are reasons to kill Julius and to let him live. The reasons for the two courses of action is what complicates the Adversary's role.

Development

If the Ambitious Person is convinced by the Adversary to forget its desires, the story ends there, though it could repeat itself if the ambition is risen against. For instance, some of the Adversary's reasons could become obsolete: Peter wants the throne, but John makes him see that the King is a strong one, and that the country is fine under his rule. When the King dies, the prince is still too young to rule, considering the enemies of the country, so Peter thinks again in taking the throne for a strong adult to rule.

If the Ambitious Person is not convinced, then it will plan and try to get the object, developing this story into Obtaining, Daring Enterprise or Conspiracy.

If the owner of the Object knows about the Ambition and the Object goes missing, it can blame the Ambitious Person. If the PCs are the Ambitious Person they need to prove their innocence, often by finding the real culprit (Enigma), probably while hiding from the owner (Pursuit)